Does anyone with a brain think that American border patrol could go into Mexico and hold Mexican citizens hostage against their will until the border patrol decided to let them off the bus or train? There is zero way the Federales would allow the US to violate their national sovereignty. It is also likely that Mexico would have refused to allow a US ship to put Mexicans off in a city 500 miles from the US border. They very likely would have refused to allow such a US ship to dock.
I know for a fact that during the Eisenhower administration that farmers in north western Ohio were importing Mexicans by the ton to pick tomatoes and other vegetable crops for Campbell's Soup and Heinz Ketchup. During tomato harvest there were Mexicans every where one looked.
The 12 to 52 week guest worker program was so poorly monitored,at least in Ohio, that many of the Mexicans stayed and got regular full time jobs. The FCC under Ike ordered local radio stations to carry Mexican programming in order to get our radio station license renewed. They had to know and condone Mexicans staying and working year round in Ohio. We were running 10 percent of our stations programming in Spanish. I had two Mexican guest workers (tomato pickers) hired as Mexican DJs. They worked for me for over 10 years... 9 years times 52 weeks is how many weeks of being illegal?
The next year the farmers would bring in a whole new bunch of guest worker immigrants and a even bigger bunch would stay on after the crops were harvested.
During this period Caesar Chavez started to try to organize the Mexican farm workers in California into a union to get better pay. Ten years later he was trying to organize the farm workers in northern Ohio.
The author of this story is quick to point out there is no record of what Ike actually did.
I also know that during the Eisenhower administration two Texans, Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson, owned the House and the Senate. That is not an exaggeration. They owned both bodies. Ike could not do crap with out their approval.
I spent a couple of years covering national news in the 50s. We used to joke that Ike spent half his time kissing Johnson's butt and the other half kissing Rayburn's. If Johnson and Rayburn wanted the Mexican border open... there is no way Ike would do anything to close it.
I watched Johnson and Rayburn work.. they had a hammer lock on the house and senate. In fact Johnson had such control of the Senate that after Johnson became president the senators changed the senate rules before selecting his successor so no majority leader could ever have that much power again.
Johnson and Rayburn would have cut appropriations for Mexican Border Guards to zero and every thing Ike wanted to do would have been Dead on Arrival. That did not happen. Ike got most of what he wanted from Johnson and Rayburn and Johnson and Rayburn got whatever they wanted from Ike. There is zero way Ike opposed those two Texans.
I don't believe this story.
after Johnson became president = after Johnson became vic president
Operation Wetback is historical fact and millions of Mexicans were sent packing. Illegals were rooted out and a lot of legal immigrants also went south
Arranging transportation deep into Mexico does not equate to the BP entering Mexico. In fact, we've done it in the past few years with aircraft.